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Rating: 
Summary: Delightful, authentic visit to 221B Baker Street!
Review: I'll admit I'm on a Sherlock Holmes kick, and what a delight it was to discover the writing of John Hall who effortlessly seems to mimic Conan Doyle while spinning a credibly Holmesian tale. Clearly an expert in the period, Hall writes with an ease and wit (I laughed out loud) truly reminiscent of the creator of Holmes and Watson - not a moment rings false in this quick-paced story of Holmes' efforts to clear his old friend Lestrade's name from a long past police fiasco, and to finally bring the truth of a horrible crime to light. Only drawback for me was that I personally prefer a bit more personal involvement of Holmes, but this was a real winner, and I can't wait to read the rest (this is apparently Hall's fourth Holmes pastiche.) A master - to be watched and savored!
Rating: 
Summary: Something different
Review: Something a bit different in the recent sea of Holmes pastiches. Here the situation faced by Holmes, Watson and Lestrade has a distinctly modern touch, but without jarring anachronism.A psycho serial child killer named Algernon Clayton, convicted 20 years before, has been released from prison on a technicality and has become the leading exhibit in a questionable but popular social reform movement. It's almost routine today for brutal killers to be sanitized by the forces of Political Correctness and converted into saintly, put-upon targets of police brutality and social repression, suitable to be the figurehead of some large organization self-proclaimed to be Fighters for Truth and Justice, and--- it could have happened in 1895 as easily as 1995. Naturally, the luckless Lestrade, who was only indirectly involved in the original case, has become the prime scapegoat of the reformers. Holmes is thus presented with a complex set of problems: if Clayton was indeed guilty, how can he be neutralized by evidence that will stand in court, before he begins another killing spree? How can Lestrade be protected from the press and the reformers? And what hope is there of finding new evidence in a case cold for two decades? To say more would spoil the grim fun. At 140 pages this is just about right in length for a case in which Holmes finds himself doing fairly routine police work in hopes of turning up some lead by sheer chance and persistence. As you can see, this isn't your mother's Holmes pastiche, unless your mother's pastiche was written by Andrew Vachss. You'll enjoy it, I think.
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